The campaign starts with some flavor text setting the theme of the campaign. It’s after the events of Star Wars Episode IV A New Hope. The Rebels have just destroyed the Death Star and the Imperials seek revenge against them. An Imperial beacon begins a broadcast on an Imperial outpost near the Rebel base on Yavin 4. An elite Rebel team is dispatched to silence the signal.

The first mission starts with guns blazing. The Rebels deploy directly in front of a group of Stormtroopers, an Imperial officer and a probe droid. Their mission is to break in to the Imperial outpost and destroy all of the broadcast terminals.

The start of the mission consisted of the players orienting themselves and trying to kill the Imperial trooper threat. I was a little worried that they would be too focused on killing the troopers and not focused on completing the mission so I kept trying to emphasize destroying the terminals. I did not need to do that.

In the first three rounds, I was successful in wounding Gideon and creating blockades with the troopers (it takes an additional movement to move past a hostile figure). My big hitter at that moment was the Probe Droid. The Stormtroopers act more like cannon fodder to waste Rebel activations on. The Imperial Officer is actually the star in a lot of my moves since he gives the Probe Droid additional attacks.

The Rebels at round three had opened the Imperial outpost door revealing more Stormtroopers, another Imperial Officer and an E-Web Engineer (turret guy). At this point, I was trying to stuff the entrance of the outpost with Troopers. Unfortunately, the rebels split up, moved passed me and headed towards the terminals on the inside. They left two guys outside to destroy the exterior terminal and scrounge through our supply crates of Shock Grenades.

At this point the outpost was being overrun, the Imperials increased the shielding on the terminals making them harder to destroy. I sent all of my people to begin wounding the Rebels. By round 6, Gaarkhan and Mak were able to destroy two more terminals. At this point, I was able to wound Mak and Fenn. Leaving the Wookie to receive one final blow for an Imperial victory. Unfortunately, Commanda Gideon was able to give Fenn orders to destroy the last terminal.

The Rebels were successful in stopping all broadcasts from the Imperial outpost causing the Imperial forces to fall into a hasty retreat.

This first mission was great. The players started and ended knowing that they needed to work together to complete the mission. I am not a good Game Master so having the flavor texts and triggers spelled out for me was very useful. The game felt balanced, I was 1 turn away from winning for the Imperials.